Post History

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/23842
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/23842
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Philipp provides a good answer, but I think there is more to say.

First, "show don't tell" has kind of become the touchstone of all advice about storytelling but it is good to remember that it originated as a piece of advice for novelists moving to writing screenplays. What is told in a novel must be shown in a movie.

In fact, novels do have to do a fair amount of telling. It is, after all, storytelling. Dramatizing everything -- which tends to mean casting everything into dialogue and action -- can be extremely tedious and false. In particular it leads to a great deal of false dialogue as characters explain things to each other that they already know.

This sort of things can work on shows like CSI because while the characters, who are all trained CSIs would know that the others were doing and how the tests work, the audience does not, and the forensics are part of the business of the show. But most of the time this falls flat and feels false.

So we do, in fact, have to tell from time to time. It is the privilege of the novelist to address the audience in a way that other media cannot, provided only that we actually do it reasonably well. And of course, there are definitely times in which a scene should be dramatized. Show don't tell can be very sound advice in particular passages without it having to the the universal rule of all writing.

Secondly, both the plan and its execution are merely the mechanics of plot. They exist to build the elements of story: to establish character, setting, conflict, tone, theme, etc. From a purely mechanical point of view, showing the planning and then the successful execution of a plan would be redundant. But both can be vehicles for character development and conflict. The story arc can thus progress through both the planning and the execution. It would be appropriate to treat them both in detail if the story arc progressed through them both.

Original score: 7